1 posts categorized "Norman Foster"

December 22, 2008

I'm starting to put together my list of significant stories for 2009--Trump Tower, the Art Institute's Modern Wing, etc.-- and this one popped up: a Lord Norman Foster-designed addition to Frank Lloyd Wright's S.C. Johnson complex in Racine, Wisc. As the Racine Journal Times has reported, the free-standing, Foster-designed addition will include a curving, glass-walled exhibition hall that will showcase a replica of the seaplane that H.F. Johnson Jr. flew to Brazil in the 1930s in search of the key ingredient for the family's now-legendary floor wax.

This will be Foster's first project in the greater Chicago area--Racine, after all, is just a short drive over the Illinois-Wisconsin border from Lake County, Illinois--but it won't be his first in the Midwest. He designed a handsome, appropriately deferential addition to Omaha's Josyln Art Museum, which was completed in 1994 and surprised those who expected a design in Foster's trademark "high tech" style. He also shaped a Wacker Drive headquarters for the Pritzker family's Hyatt hotel chain in Chicago, though the skyscraper was shelved as a result of the economic downtown that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The Journal Times reports that the Racine project, which will include a multi-purpose community building, is due to be finished next fall.